The Lens of Intrinsic Skill Atoms: A Method for Gameful Design

By Sebastian Deterding. Hum. Comput. Interact., 2015

492 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The idea that game design can inspire the design of motivating, enjoyable interactive systems has a long history in human-computer interaction. It currently experiences a renaissance as gameful design, often implemented through gamification, the use of game design elements in nongame contexts. Yet there is little research-based guidance on designing gameful systems. This article therefore reviews existing methods and identifies challenges and requirements for gameful design. It introduces a gameful design method that uses skill atoms and design lenses to identify challenges inherent in a user’s goal pursuit and restructure them to afford gameplay-characteristic motivating, enjoyable experiences. Two case studies illustrate the method. The article closes by outlining how gameful design might inform experience-driven design more generally.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Sociology and Political Science, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/01c022a88a709eddb7eeade0899bdd3bd3c0cf00

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and performance (2017, background): “(2013), offer little guidance in deciding whether points, levels or leaderboards are suitable for a given context, or how they should be implemented (Deterding, 2015).”
The maturing of gamification research (2017, background): “Much has been made about the individual differences of ‘player types’ in existing literature (Deterding, 2015a; Tondello et al., 2016).”
Gamification in Science Education. A Systematic Review of the Literature (2021, methodology): “Several researchers in gamiﬁcation have indicated that many contextual factors affect its use in education, including the content related to the gamiﬁed activity and the population it is addressed and used [53–55].”
The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research (2019, background): “Another potential explanation for the popularity of the blueprint design of points, badges and leaderboards may be that many gamification design guides and frameworks approach gamification design from a pattern-based perspective (Seffah & Taleb, 2012), and suggest designing gamification implementati”
Gamification of education and learning: A review of empirical literature (2018, background): “…are several contextual factors affecting the experiences from gamification in each situation, e.g. demographic (Koivisto & Hamari, 2014) and personality factors, the associations attached to the task or activity in general (Hamari, 2013), and the temporal and spatial context (Deterding, 2015).”
Gamification Science, Its History and Future: Definitions and a Research Agenda (2018, methodology): “Within this framework, the core of gamification is a design process (see Deterding, 2015; Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011) intended to augment or alter an existing real-world process using lessons (initially) from the game design research literature to create a revised version of that…”